After spending several days by the coast in Basque Country, my boyfriend and I decided to overshoot our daily driving quota and end up by the Mediterranean, rather than the hills outside of Girona. I had never been to the Mediterranean before. Buoyed by media representations of casual glamour, sparkling blue water and my knowledge of Brigit Bardot’s catalogue of bouncy beach hits I was ready. Most of my knowledge of the coastline was gleaned from old movies and celebrity tabloids and pertained directly to France. However, how different could the Costa Brava in Spain be? Um, pretty f'ing different. Once we could see the curve of the coastline in the distance we knew we were in trouble. Signs for whole roasted chickens were everywhere and chains of big box stores lined the streets. We had be camping for days in varying degrees of comfort and creepiness (we had a few side of the road experiences) so when we saw an oversized camping supply store with tents pitched in the parking lot I joked that we should camp there for the evening. It seems ridiculous, but not so far off base.
Despite the loveliness of the landscape in general, most of the campsites I have experienced in Spain were little more than glorified parking lots.

As we drove further into the outskirts of coastal sprawl I commented to Paul that camping here would be the suburban version of hell. Crumbling Floridian sprawl on steroids. Twenty minutes later I was proven right. We arrived at a campground by the sea in Roses where the nightly talent show was in full swing. Paul and I watched aghast as a portly blonde women proceeded to slaughter the French language as she bombarded the campsite’s children with a deluge of questions occasionally slipping in and out of cockney brogue. It was terrifying. Nonetheless, it had been a long day of driving and we decided that cool factor just was not important to us at the moment. We changed our tune when we found out the price for two people and a small tent was 42 euros! The night went downhill from there and two hours was spent driving from expensive campsite to expensive campsite wincing at hidden costs and observing hordes of squeaky clean euro teenagers tromping around in packs drinking alcohol in high heels and sweatshirts. For the most part we went unnoticed. Occasionally they would glare at us. Family vacations are….tough? After campsite number three we headed into Figueres (which Paul mistakenly believed was a rural town) with the intention of camping on the outskirts. We Americans are known for our geography skills for a reason…we soon found out that Figueres was totally cosmopolitan, had outskirts that resembled Bedford Stuvesyent in the dark and had a significant amount of industrial sprawl. We had back to Camp Laguna, campsite number three, which seemed the lesser of all evils despite the fact that there was a heavy concentration of RVs. On our last visit to their reception nearly an hour before we gathered from their rate sheet that camping would be 24 euros for two people and a tent. Wrong! It seems that Camp Laguna, like other campsites in the area has a minimum pitch fee. We were charged 37 euros which the desk clerk claimed was the minimum fee per night. I was beginning to realize what my dear friend Nadine was talking about when she hugged me good-bye in Berlin and warned me not to be verarsched in Spain. (verarsched is German for “made an ass of”) Regardless, by this point it was 11pm and Paul and I were tired and cranky. We gave the people what they wanted, went to our site and pitched our tent and ambled off to the beach cheap beers in hand to discuss what a pain in the ass the whole experience was.

I would recommend avoiding the Roses section of the Costa Brava as a vacation destination in and of itself. However, if you are visiting Barcelona or Girona and want to have a beach day a quick trip to the ocan never hurt anyone. Most likely my hopes were just a bit too high as I had romanticized the Mediterranean.